Don’t you hate it when nosy folks shoulder-surf, trying to see what you’re looking at on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac? Well, there is good news, Apple is working on a way to foil shoulder-surfers.
AppleInsider reports Apple has recently received patents related to methods to ensure that iPhone, iPad, and Mac users are the only ones who can see what’s on their screen.
At the present time, OLED and LCD Apple displays have an approximately 170-degree field of view. This means people standing off to either side of your screen can likely view what is on your device’s screen. This is a definite issue for government offices and other organizations where privacy is precious.
Apple has recently received a pair of patents related to high-quality displays that can keep private information on the displays.
The first patent, which carries the title of “Privacy films for curved displays,” describes putting a polarizing film layer on the display, emitting light from the display in a single direction, which ensures that only users sitting directly in front of the display can properly view it.
Any drive-by viewing attempts from the left or right will either see a blurry image or will be completely blocked from viewing it. However, anyone standing directly behind the user will still be able to view the screen.
Apple’s second patent, entitled “Displays with adjustable angles of view,” takes a different approach. This patent involves altering the display’s viewing angle, using what is described as an “electrically controllable filter,” controlling the polarization of the screen.
The patent describes how the display uses a series of substrate layers. The display technology would have an additional layer of liquid crystal would be inserted between the polarizing layer of the display. A color filter could also include a color filter, allowing only images with designated colors to be displayed to the user.
The system would not hide all of the information on the display, much like the golden days of printing classified documents, which were sometimes printed on pages of a specific color.
